People are being led to Christ continually through Total Member Involvement (TMI) and I Will Go initiatives. Under pandemic and travel restrictions, people yearn for God, His strength, and the fellowship of a faith community even more. Although Satan has been trying in every possible way to hinder our effort in sharing the Good News and to obstruct from us the joy of participating in God’s mission, we continue to witness God’s power moving and His saving grace displayed. Unable to travel far and outside of the Philippines, we saw many doors opened by God for us to reach His beloved people - the Mangyans of the highlands of Mindoro. Through His faithful and dedicated front liners, He is spreading the gospel in the unreached corners of the island of Mindoro even under raging typhoons!
The SSD leadership, along with the departmental directors, the AWR team, local pastors, Bible workers, youth, and even children are intentionally and prayerfully seeking, saving, and discipling people of all ages, tribes, languages, socio-economic backgrounds, and distances. Under the pandemic, we have adopted different strategies and intensified our effort to reach people through media ministry along with visitations, faith-sharing care group meetings, and friendship ministry with the inter-faith communities. Both Oriental and Occidental Mindoro were the focused locations for our combined evangelistic effort in reaching the Mangyans - various tribal groups of the Philippines scattered around the highlands of the island of Mindoro.
The months of September and early October were set aside for the evangelistic series on-site under the theme: Hope for Mindoro. The evangelistic campaign happened in both places under Oriental Mindoro: Puerto Galera and Mansalay, before moving to the Occidental Mindoro region. We planned these evangelistic meetings sequentially by starting from the eastern side of the island in late September when the weather was good; then, we moved on to the western region as our final avenue for SSD’s combined effort with 16 evangelistic meetings happening concurrently on site. We went there with our anticipation of having the same weather condition; we were moving in faith without realizing what was ahead of us – a large tropical typhoon named Maring.
From the very first day itself, we were battling with the maximal strength of Maring. For the entire week in Occidental Mindoro, we were in a heavy downpour and relentless winds that umbrellas were found useless. As some places were not accessible by cars due to narrow roads, our means of traveling was through a motorbike, and we had no choice but to preach in wet clothes. Many of our temporary evangelistic shelters were flooded with water up to our ankles. Under such weather conditions, we were not very positive about the number of attendees for the remaining days.
To our surprise, the number of attendees was greater than we expected even among the flooded areas. In some places where the meetings were in the buildings and churches, we had between 200-300 people attending every night. From wearing shoes to the meeting in the evenings, we shifted to wearing slippers while preaching. We were inspired and moved by the great interest of people. There was no doubt that the Holy Spirit was working and moving in the hearts of people seeking the Truth.
The combined efforts of SSD and Adventist World Radio 360 have been paid well during the past months. We have concluded the events of conducting evangelistic series on sites in the island of Mindoro – Oriental and Occidental Mindoro with 1,380 baptisms combined. We are reminded again and again that in Christ and under God’s love and grace, there is no distinction between people from the lowland or the highland areas. There are no Mangyans nor other natives as the Bible reminds us in Galatians 3:28 saying, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Everyone is called to be a disciple of God, to be gifted with abundant life, Hope, and Salvation!
Orathai Chureson, PhD Adventist Children's Ministries Directors and Ministerial Spouses Association Coordinator